THE MOTHER-IN-LAW FROM HELL; “MA”
DUNCAN
This is the story
of Frank Duncan and his mother Elizabeth and how their “incestuous”
relationship ended in the murder of Frank’s pregnant wife, Olga.
Elizabeth Duncan,
herself, is an interesting woman. Depending on who you believe, she had from 11
to 15 husbands and 2 to 4 children, her favorite being Frank. It seems she
would con younger men into marrying her by telling them she needed to be
married to collect a sizable inheritance, and she would split it with them. Once
they were married, she would fleece them and then leave, going on to the next
man.
Elizabeth tried to kill herself because Frank
had decided to strike out on his own and get his own apartment. During
Elizabeth’s confinement, Frank met Olga, one of his mother’s nurses. Olga and Frank
dated in secret because every time Frank would mention dating his mother would
try to kill herself. After she left the hospital, she would call Olga, threatening
her and telling her she would never marry Frank.
When Olga got
pregnant, Frank was forced to own up and marry her. To say the least, his
mother was livid. She went so far as to hire a young man to pose as Frank and
illegally had the marriage annulled. The young man certainly could have passed
for Frank, but Olga as Franks young wife? The judge must have been blind or had
recently come into a sum of money. She was also planning to have her son
kidnapped and held hostage until he agreed to divorce his wife. None of this
worked to get the pair to divorce.
To appease his
mother, Frank moved out of his and his wife’s house and back in with ‘Mother.”
This did not make the pregnant bride very happy.
Olga disappeared
in November 1958 when she was 30 years old and 7 months pregnant. Two men who
had been hired by Elizabeth came to the door and said that Frank was drunk in
their back seat. When Olga came to get Frank, the pair hit her over the head
and drove her to a remote location. There they tried first to strangle her.
They would have shot her but the gun broke when they hit her in the head with
it. They continued with their ineptitude when they realized they didn’t have any
shovels to dig a grave for Olga; they ended up doing it with their hands. They
didn’t bother to check to see if Olga was dead before they buried her. She
ended up being buried alive.
Her body was
eventually found when two men confessed that Ma Duncan had hired them to kill
the girl. Olga was beaten, strangled, and then buried while she was still
alive.
Police began to
suspect Ma Duncan when then found out about the illegal annulment. At her
trial, the nature of Frank and his mother’s relationship was called into
question and it was hinted but never proven that it was an incestuous one. It
did not take long for Ma Duncan to be found guilty and sentenced to death. Frank,
who was a lawyer, worked tirelessly to
